“You do not have to be good / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting,” wrote Mary Oliver in her poem ‘Wild Geese’. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” The line not only lends its imagery to the title of Soft Animal, the forthcoming third album from New Jersey‘s Long Neck, but its underlying sentiment to the album as a whole. The idea that perseverance need not be some lesson in noble suffering, a penance to be served at the cost of comfort and health, but rather something more fulfilling and therapeutic.
Out later this month on Specialist Subject Records and Plastic Miracles, the record sees lead Lily Mastrodimos joined by a whole host of collaborators, with John Ambrosio, Marlene Bellissimo (Dreamsounds), JB Fulbright (Prior Panic), Emma Witmer (gobbinjr) and R N Taylor (Sparky Deathcap/Los Campesinos!) all lending their talents, as well as Mastrodimos’s cousin Jessica Taylor and even her child baby Rudy. A supportive cast which furthers the record’s sincere, communal tone. Together they create a space in which Mastrodimos need not walk on her knees in order to make a record, but rather rediscover the joys of songwriting in the spirit of Oliver’s soft animal.
The record follows 2020 release World’s Strongest Dog, Long Neck’s self-released second album which experienced more than its fair share of problems. Soft Animal sees Mastrodimos emerge from this period a little tentative, definitely changed, trying to figure out where writing songs fits amid the trials of an insecure music industry and general despair of the wider world. An attempt, that is, to look beyond these obstacles and return solely to the pure motivation to create. “This is an album about addressing these instincts and attempting to reconnect with a dormant part of your being,” said Mastrodimos. “I recorded it to prove to myself that writing music is something I can still do, and that I still love doing. I wrote it as an act of self-love, tenderness, and as a way to process the anger and frustration that stems from living through a pandemic.”
Lead single ‘The Gardener’ gives an insight into just what this sounds like. A song which starts out deceptively bare with its wary guitar, Mastrodimos’s unguarded delivery both intimate and uncertain. “Every dream I’ve had this week has taken place at night,” she sings, “Nothing in the sky, no planes passing by / when the sun emerges I am baffled by its glare.” But as the song emerges so does Bellissimo’s violin, its lush warmth not so much replacing the cautious tone but lending it a compassionate weight. The effect is furthered by backing vocals at opportune moments, a gentle yet stirring addition which gives another meaning to the phrase. Backing as in having your back. “Mornings are unbearable / I said to no-one / and they responded / but won’t you miss it when its gone?”
